Former Victorian assistant police commissioner Noel Ashby met Read in the mid-1980s when he was a sergeant in St Kilda.

He says the self-confessed hit man was a great storyteller and the gap between truth and fiction was wide.

"If you Google him now you'll see he's been linked with up to 19 murders. I was a detective for eight years in the homicide squad and the only killing - and we don't mention that in any downgrading sense - was a self-defence issue where he was acquitted of the murder," he said.